


Kintsugi

by Lily_Padd_23



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Also a reminder to go to therapy, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Josh has a good therapist, Love, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, One Shot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sam's POV after Noel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 11:34:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17406173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily_Padd_23/pseuds/Lily_Padd_23
Summary: About a month after Noël (Season 2 Episode 10), before Bartlet's Third State of the Union (Season 2 Episode 13).  Sam's perspective on Josh's PTSD recovery process."It was too simple to say that the old Josh was back. None of them could ever be who they were before Rosslyn. Particularly not Josh. But it seemed that fire Josh had always had was back. Only now, it was coming from somewhere inside him instead of chasing at his heels."





	Kintsugi

Kintsugi  
By Lily Padd

 

Sam’s eyes were going dizzy over piles of State of the Union notes. He was just barely managing to hold his chin up with his palm, his pen gripped tightly in his other hand so he wouldn’t drop it. It was one of those late nights where the longer he looked at the words in front of him, the less comprehensible they became, almost like the ink before him was just swirling around the lines of the page.

Trying to shake the fog from his head, he nudged up his glasses to rub his blurry eyes. When he pulled his hands away, his gaze landed on the opposite side of the bullpen. His gaze landed on Josh.

Josh stood, bent over the document in his hands, lost in its contents. Sam’s eyes trailed across him: the arch of his neck, the mop of his hair, the lost-in-thought purse of his lips.

Sam felt himself swallow hard when it occurred to him how long it had been since he had felt those lips on his… on his body, on his skin. Before Rosslyn, the two of them had fallen comfortably into a routine of alternating back and forth between each other’s places: staying up late into the night living out untold fantasies or crashing on top of each other in the bed, barely able to keep their eyes open or falling onto the sofa in each other’s boxers just to talk or… or. It had started to feel like that was how life might be forever. Then… Sam blinked away the memories of the hailstorm of bullets. He tried not to think about Josh’s face, pale and broken beneath the oxygen mask, as he was wheeled down the corridors of George Washington…

The months that followed, Sam recollected, in some ways, Josh had bounced right back. In other ways, he had sunken into himself through the gash in his chest. Indeed, some days, it was like nothing had happened, all hot-tempered with the spring in his step from how much he loved what he did. Other days, he would close himself in his office, flinch at Sam’s touch, and barely allow himself to make eye contact with anyone.

Sam had worked hard not to take it personally. He knew it wasn’t about him. He worked hard to give Josh the support he needed by giving him the space he was creating around himself.

But December had come with a rush of cold, and Josh started throwing everything he had been hoarding in his chest at those who stood just outside the orbit of his trauma. Sam remembered how he had snapped quicker and quicker, breaking down piece by piece, until he exploded in the Oval Office. Sam could still close his eyes and see the back of Josh’s head as he frenzied, pounding his chest and screaming. A quiet, “Josh…” was the only thing like comfort he could provide, though he had almost felt a physical force pulling him to wrap his arms around Josh and just hold him there. Just hold him in a puddle on the Presidential seal until he felt his heartbeat steady and his hands stop shaking.

Sam still didn’t know about everything that had taken place on Christmas Eve. He knew there were some things Josh wasn’t ready to talk about. And that was fine. He’d heard some things. He’d known Josh was with ATVA. He’d heard about the diagnosis: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. They’d all been gracefully informed that Josh was in therapy so they could help keep his tri-weekly sessions out of the way of public scrutiny.

It had been nearly a month since Christmas Eve and everything that had happened, Sam realized. And Josh was already slipping back into something like his normal self. He laughed again, he made sarcastic one-liners, he swaggered to senior staff meetings, and he filled the halls with his spirited debates with Donna. He’d even started making those do-me eyes at Sam again. He was like the Josh of last Spring, before the shooting, except now his conversations had become peppered with turns of phrase like “cleansing breath” and “practicing mindful listening” and “my therapist says standing with my back against the wall will relax me.”

It was too simple to say that the old Josh was back. None of them could ever be who they were before Rosslyn. Particularly not Josh. But it seemed that fire Josh had always had was back. Only now, it was coming from somewhere inside him instead of chasing at his heels.

It suddenly hit Sam that he had been peering at Josh, somewhat longingly, through his office window for a substantial duration. Just as this dawned on him, Josh glanced up, meeting Sam’s eyes from beneath his eyebrows. Josh held his gaze, not looking away this time, not balking in the vulnerability of finding himself caught in Sam’s stare. Rather, his lips curled into his boyish half-smile, half-smirk. Sam’s heart leapt, and he felt himself smile back before Josh quietly, smoothly turned to go back to his office.

 

           “Toby,” Sam said, rapping on his boss’s open door about an hour later, “I’m going home.”

           “You finish the section on clean energy?” Toby didn’t bother looking up from his own equally large pile of notes.

            “It’s almost there,” Sam assured, “The thing is happening where I look at the same line over and over until it stops making sense. Gonna clear my head. Work on it at home.”

Toby just waved him off, no longer listening, so he went to gather his things. He saw Josh in his office, on the phone, leaning back in his chair, his free hand in his hair, sparring energetically about something to do with the WTO. Sam and the other speechwriters tended to find themselves a step back from all the quotidian policy making when the State of the Union was this soon. Not that he minded. 

As stressful as the SOTU was, it was honestly one of Sam’s favorite things in the world: getting to craft and shape broad, overarching themes, goals, and motivation while also getting to churn through the nit-picking minutia of finding the perfect word. Sam thrived when he got to occupy both extremes of the binary between big picture and tiny, perfectionist details.

Josh lived somewhere in the middle. Josh reveled in the day-to-day of _getting things done_ , in the logistics of making a country work. He was never at his happiest when he had to confront things in philosophical abstraction, nor when he had to focus on seemingly mundane particulars, both of which fascinated Sam. Sam could spend countless hours pouring over an idea or a philosophy or a theory or a legal precedent and then turn around and take just as long talking about how one word in one sentence in one paragraph affected the meaning. Josh would listen and then ask flatly, “Okay, so what are you suggesting we _do?”_

Pulling on his pea coat, something crossed Sam’s mind about impressionist painters and a theory about being able to tell what kind of person someone was by how they looked at a Monet. Something about how there were two kinds of people: the kind that liked to stand far away and take in the whole landscape and the kind that preferred to get up close and examine every brushstroke. That theory seemed flawed to Sam. He himself liked to step back and talk about the whole painting, but also how all the intricacies of each brushstroke contributed to the piece in its entirety. Josh just liked to paint.

He was doing it now, Sam thought. Circling the same idea in his head, picking it apart, spitting it back out until the right description of their differences stuck. All while Josh was on the phone, bargaining, hedging his bets, reeling in and out of the game that was politics, getting the job done. At a quarter past eleven.

That’s why they were good at their jobs, Sam supposed as he stepped out of the shower at home. He got into his faded, cream-colored Princeton sweatshirt and a new pair of blue and black flannel pajamas— the nice ones— that his mom had gotten him that Christmas. Wiping off his glasses, he settled into his sofa with his notes from the day’s writing sessions. The revisions flew through his pen and onto the legal pad effortlessly now. Sometimes a change of scenery was all it took.

 

He didn’t notice how many hours had passed until he heard a knock at the door. His head jerked to his watch. It was almost 2:00 AM. The knock came again along with a muffled, “Sam? You up?”

Sam shuffled to open the door. Josh leaned against the doorframe, still in his brown suit, his backpack swung over his shoulder, his coat flung open. Directly from the office.

           “Hello, Josh,” Sam smiled tenderly, straightening up.

           “Hello, Sam, I was just thinking about….” he paused, quietly flustered, as they both became very aware of how close together their faces were, “How y’doing?” Josh whispered.

           “Josh…” Sam murmured, wanting to close the remaining space between their lips, “You want to come in?”

           “Yeah,” Josh’s eyes twinkled a little bit. The door closed behind him, and the second the sound of it clicked, Josh’s hands cupped Sam’s face. They kissed for a long, deep moment, Josh’s face pressing into Sam’s glasses, Sam finding the spot on Josh’s hips where this hands fit perfectly like pockets. When they pulled apart, their cheeks were flushed, eyes bright, bodies tingling. 

           “Hello again, Sam,” Josh said in a barely-there whisper, his brown eyes wide, earnest, and hungry. 

           “Hello again,” Sam replied breathlessly, “I’ve missed you.”

            “I’m sorry, Sam, I never…” before Josh could complete his sentence, Sam shook his head, dropping kisses on his neck and repeating in a hushed lull, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

With some sort of unspoken signal, they moved to the bedroom, their fingertips scarcely lacing together as Josh trailed behind Sam, letting his backpack drop to the floor. As they slowly pulled off each other’s clothes, Sam could feel his blood pulsing in his veins, in his temples, in his pants. He had to hold his breath to keep from rushing, to keep from pulling Josh down on top of him and covering his body in passionate bruises of kisses.

He wanted to savor this; he wanted to live in every second of every step. He didn’t want just the big picture. He didn't want to fixate on the significance, that Josh was here, that Josh was with him, that Josh was alive, that Josh was finally kissing him again. He didn't want to get swept up in that. Not right now.

He didn’t want just the details, either, the way Josh’s tongue felt in his mouth, his hands on his arms, his breath on his ear. He didn’t just want the brush strokes.

He wanted the process. He wanted each second of it. In one direction or the other, he didn’t want to overthink it, to analyze it as it was happening. He didn’t want to lose himself in the meaning, in the way it felt to be together again after so, so long, in what it meant for him and for Josh after all this time. He didn’t want to lose himself at all. He wanted to remember everything. He wanted to be completely in tune with the logistics of the process, of the build up. He wanted Josh. He wanted to experience Josh how Josh experienced him. He wanted to be there, not just think about it.

So they made love that night, slow and languid, fingers inching across skin, kisses starting out softly and building and building… thrusting and pausing and holding each other and laughing a little in the hazy lamplight, running fingers and lips and tongues across each other so they could remember what every centimeter of skin tasted like. Sam gripped Josh’s arm, sketching his thumbs across each little freckle all the way up to his shoulder, leaving goose bumps across Josh’s skin. Josh’s soft moans and sharp, faint inhales made Sam feel something like tipsy.

And so when they finally picked up speed and pushed into the mattress, groaning, tightening, and rising and falling, and sinking nails into each other’s backs, teeth on each other’s lips, fists tangled in each other’s hair… it felt like the final movement of a long, drawn out symphony. Crashing together as they finally erupted and collapsed into each other was a long-awaited crescendo. For another one of those long, deep moments, they just lay there: Josh on Sam’s chest, panting hard in unison, swelling to catch their breath. And Josh buried his face in Sam’s neck, promising in a dry whisper, “Never… gonna… go… that long… again.” And then Sam wrapped Josh in the tight, firm, hard embrace he’d been aching to give him for months.

They washed each other off with a rag, and Josh pulled on Sam’s new flannel pajama pants without having to ask. That night between them had made the time since their last encounter almost seem to evaporate.

 

Stumbling about in the steamy of glow of their intimacies, their eyes giggled at each other in the return to familiarity to which they had become so accustomed before Rosslyn. Sam put on his boxer briefs and the Princeton sweatshirt he’d been wearing and made his way to the toilet where he softly beamed up at Josh, who brushed his teeth with a toothbrush he’d left there over a year ago and splashed water over his face.

Josh slid back into the bed wearing just Sam’s pajama bottoms, and Sam watched him from the bathroom doorway before turning to his sink to brush and floss his own teeth, wash his face, and comb his hair. The process, Sam thought. The logistics of living. He decided he could love this part as much as he loved the hairs on the back of Josh’s neck and the crow’s feet around his eyes. Or as much any sweeping romantic gesture.

All these little nighttime routines— the way their shoulders bumped in the bathroom, the way their toes wrapped together when Sam joined Josh beneath the comforter— all these little things that he hadn’t even realized he had missed so terribly just fell back into place.

And yet, it wasn’t exactly the same way it was before. Because underneath everything, there was something new. Something Sam couldn’t quite name, not yet.

Resilience, he thought, as he tucked his head on Josh’s shoulder and wrapped his arm around his chest. Without having to acknowledge it, they could now both take solace knowing they were going to be okay and they were going to be okay together. Tonight confirmed that. They weren’t out the other side of this, but when they were, they would still be together.

Without much awareness of it, Sam traced his fingers on Josh’s chest, which was starting to lift and fall heavily with sleepiness. As Josh drifted off, Sam continued to weave his fingers through the dark brown hair on Josh’s chest, drawing hesitant circles around Josh’s scar, still red, but less puffy than it had been. He allowed his fingertips to just graze the gnawing white scar tissue, a knot tightening in his own chest, as he could no longer push aside the memories from that night.

He thought about the first sound of the gunshot in his ears. He thought about landing on the asphalt on top of C.J. He thought about shattered glass. He thought about Toby’s face when he’d yelled out for help in a kind of dazed panic having found Josh.

He thought about police lights in his eyes as they rode behind the ambulance. He thought about pushing his way through rows of people to be by Josh’s side, to try and comfort him in his pain and delirium. _You went to New Hampshire. We both did._ He thought about scratchy blue hospital seats. He thought about how many times he thought about what he would do if Josh died.

He thought about doing the morning shows to talk about the shooting and trying to keep his composure, even as his hands shook and his feet could barely stay steady beneath him every time he stood up.

He thought about seeing Josh again for the first time after he woke up. He thought about IV drips and monitors beeping. He thought about how Josh had squeezed his hand so lightly he could barely feel it. He thought about the redness of Josh’s eyes.

He thought about pushing Josh in his wheelchair through the corridors of the White House, trying to make him laugh. He thought about trying not to make him laugh when he winced in the pain of it.

He thought about the shifts they’d all taken to look after him at his place.   He thought about chicken noodle soup and Chinese takeout and casseroles in other people’s Tupperware. He thought about how strange it had been to sleep on Josh’s couch after spending years sleeping in his bed practically every other night.

He thought about the night Josh had finally reemerged from his bedroom and asked him to come sleep beside him when he decided having someone else’s movement in the bed was tolerable again. He thought about how Josh had reached for him. How all he had the energy for was to hold Sam’s pinky with his.

He thought about how he looked the same and didn’t. He thought about the way he had twisted in his seat at the Congressional Christmas party. He thought about the feeling of helplessness, having no idea what to do for him. He thought about white bandages. He thought about how much better Josh was doing, but how much it still hurt sometimes. He thought about Kintsugi.

 Josh’s eyes flitted open, Sam’s fingers still gingerly dancing across his scar. Josh groggily pressed his chin down to look at Sam’s fingers before adjusting to sit up a bit more.

           “Hey…” he breathed.

           “Hey,” Sam replied, “Can’t sleep.”

           “What’s on your mind?”

          “Kintsugi,” Sam told him. Josh furrowed his brow and shook his head. Sam said, “It’s an ancient Japanese tradition where they use a mixture of lacquer and gold dust to put pieces of broken pottery back together.” Josh didn’t respond, so Sam went on, “The mended pottery ends up covered in these exquisite golden lines, and it’s thought to be even more precious and beautiful than before.”

            “Huh,” was all Josh said before closing his eyes and falling further into his pillow. But he clapped his hand around Sam’s and held it firmly to his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> So, of course these boys don't belong to me. 
> 
>  
> 
> I was inspired to write this piece when I revisited one of my favorite poems, "The Joins" by Chana Bloch.  
> Google it.  
> Read it.  
> Read it again.  
> It's beautiful.
> 
>  
> 
> Also, in case you're a big gay nerd like me (and Sam) here's an article about kintsugi if you want to learn more: https://www.lifegate.com/people/lifestyle/kintsugi
> 
>  
> 
> Feedback always appreciated! :)


End file.
